Jersey Jazzman: Massachusetts Charter Schools and Their Problems With "Attrition"

The debate about lifting the Massachusetts charter school cap continues to rage on, in anticipation of November's vote on Question 2:

Question 2 on the November ballot will ask voters if they support giving Massachusetts the authority to lift the cap on charter schools. As it stands, no more than 120 charter schools are allowed to operate in the state; there are currently 78 active charters.

A "Yes" vote on Question 2 would give the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education the authority to lift the cap, allowing up to 12 new charter schools or expansions of existing charters each year.

Priority would be given to charters that open in lower-performing districts. New charters and charter expansions approved under this law would be exempt from existing limits on the number of charter schools, the number of students enrolled in them and the amount of local school districts' spending allocated to them.

Pro-charter researchers have been weighing in. I'll get to their arguments in due time, but for now, I want to concentrate on a key issue in the charter cap debate: attrition.Determining whether attrition affects charter school results is central to the argument for (or against) their expansion in Massachusetts and elsewhere. If charter schools shed kids year after year -- especially if those kids are low-performing -- then their vaunted performance advantages are in question, particularly when compared to public district schools that aren't losing students.

The Massachusetts charter sector has been pushing back hard on this point. Here, for example, are the "facts" from the Massachusetts Charter Public* School Association:

ATTRITION RATES

The attrition rate in Boston and in Gateway City charters “has remained lower” than the attrition rates of district schools in those communities, according to data by (DESE) in Dec. 2015 (2014-2015 school year).